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Representing Vulnerabilities in Contemporary Literature (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Literature)
by Miriam Fernández-Santiago Cristina M. Gámez-FernándezRepresenting Vulnerabilities in Contemporary Literature includes a collection of essays exploring the ways in which recent literary representations of vulnerability may problematize its visibilization from an ethical and aesthetic perspective. Recent technological and scientific developments have accentuated human vulnerability in many and different ways at a cross-national, and even cross-species level. Disability, technological, and ecological vulnerabilities are new foci of interest that add up to gender, precarity and trauma, among others, as forms of vulnerability in this volume. The literary visualization of these vulnerabilities might help raise social awareness of one’s own vulnerabilities as well as those of others so as to bring about global solidarity based on affinity and affect. However, the literary representation of forms of vulnerability might also deepen stigmatization phenomena and trivialize the spectacularization of vulnerability by blunting readers’ affective response towards those products that strive to hold their attention and interest in an information-saturated, global entertainment market.
Representing Women: Law, Literature, and Feminism
by Susan Sage Heinzelman Zipporah Batshaw WisemanThis anthology explores the provocative intersection between feminist, literary, and legal theories. Written by feminist thinkers from law and literature, discourses that each produce culturally powerful representations of women, these essays contest the boundaries that usually separate these disciplines and thereby alter the possibilities of those representations that have traditionally disempowered women.Beginning with an exploration of the ways in which women are represented--how they either tell or have their stories told in literature, in the law, in a courtroom--this collection demonstrates the interrelatedness of the legal and the literary. Whether considering the status of medieval women readers or assessing the effectiveness and extent of contemporary rape law reform, the essays show that power first comes with telling one's own story, and that the degree and effect of that power are determined by the cultural significance of the forum in which the story is presented. But telling the story is not enough. One must also be aware of how the story is contained within traditional constructs or boundaries and is thus limited in its effects, as Carol Sanger's essay on mothers and legal/sexual identity makes clear. One must also recognize how a story might perpetuate an ideological agenda that is not in the best interests of the storyteller, as Elizabeth Butler Cullingford shows in her reading of Yeats's "Leda and the Swan" and one must know the historical context of a story and of its telling, as Anne B. Goldstein's essay on lesbian narratives discloses.Breaking down the boundaries between law and literature, this anthology makes evident the ways in which the effect of women's stories has been constrained and expands the range of possibilities for those who represent women, tell women's stories, or present women's issues. Representing Women makes the retelling of old stories about women compelling and the telling of new ones both necessary and possible.Contributors. Kathryn Abrams, Linda Brodkey, Rita Copeland, Elizabeth Butler Cullingford, Margaret Anne Doody, Susan B. Estrich, Michelle Fine, Anne B. Goldstein, Angela P. Harris, Susan Sage Heinzelman, Christine L. Krueger, Martha Minow, Carol Sanger, Judy Scales-Trent
Representing Women
by Beth ReingoldWomen in public office are often assumed to "make a difference" for women, as women--in other words, to represent their female constituents better than do their male counterparts. But is sex really an accurate predictor of a legislator's political choices and actions? In this book, Beth Reingold compares the representational activities and attitudes of male and female members of the Arizona and California state legislatures to illuminate the broader implications of the election and integration of women into public office. In the process, she challenges many of the assumptions that underlie popular expectations of women and men in politics.Using in-depth interviews, survey responses, and legislative records, Reingold actually uncovers more similarities between female and male politicians than differences. Moreover, the stories she presents strongly suggest that rather than assuming that who our representatives are determines what they will do in office, we must acknowledge the possibility that the influence of gender on legislative behavior can be weakened, distorted, or accentuated by powerful forces within the social and political contexts of elective office.
Representing Youth: Methodological Issues in Critical Youth Studies
by Amy L. BestFrom youth culture to adolescent sexuality to the consumer purchasing power of children en masse, studies are flourishing. Yet doing research on this unquestionably more vulnerable-whether five or fifteen--population also poses a unique set of challenges and dilemmas for researchers. How should a six-year-old be approached for an interview? What questions and topics are appropriate for twelve year olds? Do parents need to give their approval for all studies?In Representing Youth, Amy L. Best has assembled an important group of essays from some of today's top scholars on the subject of youth that address these concerns head on, providing scholars with thoughtful and often practical answers to their many methodological concerns. These original essays range from how to conduct research on youth in ways that can be empowering for them, to issues of writing and representation, to respecting boundaries and to dealing with issues of risk and responsibility to those interviewed. For anyone doing research or working with children and young adults, Representing Youth offers an indispensable guide to many of the unique dilemmas that research with kids entails.Contributors include: Amy L. Best, Sari Knopp Biklen, Elizabeth Chin, Susan Driver, Marc Flacks, Kathryn Gold Hadley, Madeline Leonard, C.J. Pascoe, Rebecca Raby, Alyssa Richman, Jessica Taft, Michael Ungar, Yvonne Vissing, and Stephani Etheridge Woodson.
Repression and Resistance: Insider Accounts of Apartheid (Routledge Revivals)
by Robin Cohen Yvonne Muthien Abebe ZegeyeOriginally published in 1990, this book provides a unique view of South Africa and when it was published, it represented a coming of age of a new and vigorous strand of scholarship. The contributors are black social scientists, doctors or trade unionists, some working inside black universities which subsequently turned against the apartheid planners who created them. This book reflects the conviction that the black people of South Africa are not only passive victims of white repression, but actors with the capacity for both overt and covert resistance. Whether writing about the health service, shopfloor struggles, or the evasion of pass controls, the contributors combine scholarly analysis with an insider’s knowledge of the difference between apartheid theory and the social reality of South Africa during the 1990s.
Repression and Resistance in Communist Europe (BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies)
by Jason SharmanThis book explores the role of coercion in the relationship between the citizens and regimes of communist Eastern Europe. Looking in detail at Soviet collectivisation in 1928-34, the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 and the Polish Solidarity Movement of 1980-84, it shows how the system excluded channels to enable popular grievances to be translated into collective opposition; how this lessened the amount of popular protest, affected the nature of such protest as did occur and entrenched the dominance of state over society.
Repression, Exile, and Democracy: Uruguayan Culture
by Louise B. Popkin Saul SosnowskiRepression, Exile, and Democracy, translated from the Spanish, is the first work to examine the impact of dictatorship on Uruguyan culture. <P><P>Some of Uruguay's best-known poets, writers of fiction, playwrights, literary critics and social scientists participate in this multidisciplinary study, analyzing how varying cultural expressions have been affected by conditions of censorship, exile and "insilio" (internal exile), torture, and death. <P><P>The first section provides a context for the volume, with its analyses of the historical, political, and social aspects of the Uruguayan experience. The following chapters explore various aspects of cultural production, including personal experiences of exile and imprisonment, popular music, censorship, literary criticism, return from exile, and the role that culture plays in redemocratization. <P><P>This book's appeal extends well beyond the study of Uruguay to scholars and students of the history and culture of other Latin American nations, as well as to fields of comparative literature and politics in general. <P><P>Contributors. Hugo Achugar, Alvarro Barros-Lémez, Lisa Block de Behar, Amanda Berenguer, Hiber Conteris, José Pedro Díaz, Eduardo Galeano, Edy Kaufman, Leo Masliah, Carina Perelli, Teresa Porzecanski, Juan Rial, Mauricio Rosencof, Jorge Ruffinelli, Saúl Sosonowski, Martin Weinstein, Ruben Yáñez
Repression, Resistance and Collaboration in Stalinist Romania 1944-1964: Post-communist Remembering (Memory Studies: Global Constellations)
by Monica CiobanuThis book examines how the process of remembering Stalinist repression in Romania has shifted from individual, family, and group representations of lived and witnessed experiences characteristic of the 1990s to more recent and state-sponsored expressions of historical remembrance through their incorporation in official commemorations, propaganda sites, and restorative and compensatory measures. Based on fieldwork dealing with Stalinist repression and memorialization, together with archival research on the secret police (Securitate), it adopts an interdisciplinary approach to reveal the resurfacing of particular themes. As such it draws on concepts from sociology, political science, and legal studies, related to memory, justice, redress, identity, accountability, and reconciliation. A study of competing narratives concerning the meaning of the past as part of a struggle over the legitimacy of the post-communist state, Repression, Resistance, and Collaboration in Stalinist Romania 1944–1964 combines memory studies with a transitional justice approach that will appeal to scholars of sociology, heritage and memory studies, politics, and law.
Reprising Craftsmanship: An Expressive Approach to Skill (SpringerBriefs in Psychology)
by Pablo RojasCraftsmanship provides an insight into an inherently human dimension of work resulting from our immersion in an occupation or profession. The present book illustrates and defines the vital, social, aesthetic, and ethical dimensions involved in craftsmanship, which rejects a dissociation between handwork and wit, or between action and thought. This also contrasts with the neglect contemporary psychology has shown toward craftsmanship and its reduction to mere ‘human factors.’ Drawing on artistry as an emblem, the present account conveys that skilful action can only be renewed in a cycle involving both the personal and the transgenerational. There is little doubt in psychological and anthropological literature that the current global crises cannot be separated from social predicaments; namely, from the commodification of craftsmanship. In this book, the development of skilful action attests to a fundamental involvement required to sustainably perpetuate human endeavours. The role of expressivity in reappropriating technical activity is key in showing the continuous revaluation of our ethics and aesthetics of work, practice, and creation. The overall arc of the volume shows a movement from responsivity to responsibility. In short, if we are to reformulate our relationship to work and craft, we need to see through our responsibility in technique. The particularities of craftsmanship described here aim to contribute to such reformulation.
Reproducing Class
by Henry Rutz Erol M. BalkanMiddle classes are by definition ambiguous, raising all sorts of paradoxical questions, perceived and real, about their power and place relative to those above and below them in a class-structured society. Focusing on families of the new middle class in Istanbul, the authors of this study address questions about the social construction of middle-class reality in the context of the rapid changes that have come about through recent economic growth in global markets and the global diffusion of information technology. After 1980, Turkey saw a structural transformation from state-owned and managed industry, banking, and media and communications to privatization and open markets. The idea of being middle class and the reality of middle-class practices became open for negotiation and interpretation. This study therefore offers a particularly interesting case study of an emergent global phenomenon known as the transnational middle class, characterized by their location of work in globalizing cities, development of transnational social networks, sumptuary consumption habits, and residences in gated communities. As the authors show, this new middle class associates quality education, followed by property and lifestyle issues, with the concept of a comfortable life.
Reproducing Fictional Ethnographies: Surrogacy and Digitally Performed Anthropological Knowledge (Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology)
by Anna ApostolidouThis book focuses on the example of surrogate motherhood to explore the interplay between new reproductive technologies and new ethnographic writing technologies. It seeks to interrogate the potential of fictional multimodality in ethnography and to illuminate the generative possibilities of digital artefacts in anthropological research. It also makes a case for the tailor-made character of ethnographic writing in the digital era, arguing that research quests and representational modalities can be paired together to develop unique narrative forms, corresponding to each particular topic’s traits and analytical affordances. Focusing on the intersections of assisted reproduction technologies and digitally mediated writing, this study casts light upon the value of the affective, the fictional and the ‘real’ in the anthropological research and writing of relatedness. Analyzing the situated knowledge of ethnographers and research interlocutors, it experiments with multimodal storytelling and revisits the century-long debate on the affinity between an object of study and the possibilities for its representation. As the first attempt to bring together digital anthropology, fiction writing and the ethnography of surrogacy, this book fuses the genealogy of feminist critique on the orthodox, phallocentric, and heteronormative aspects of academic discourse with the input of digital humanities vis-à-vis troubling the conventional formal properties of scholarly writing.
Reproducing Gender: Critical Essays on Educational Theory and Feminist Politics
by Madeleine ArnotReproducing Gender charts the development of a theory of gender relations built up over the last twenty years. This theory has been highly influential in establishing the importance of the sociology of women's education for the study of society. It demonstrates the power of feminist educational theory and research, and its role in creating new political and academic agendas.This fascinating book explores gender relationships at all levels of schooling. It brings together political, social and cultural theories to understand continuity and change in gender and education. Madeleine Arnot, widely considered to be a pioneer in the field of gender and education, brings together for the first time in a single volume her most influential writings. This book is essential reading for students and academics in the areas of gender studies, women's studies, educational policy, sociology and history of education.
Reproducing Gender: Politics, Publics, and Everyday Life after Socialism
by Susan Gal & Gail KligmanThe striking fact that abortion was among the first issues raised, after 1989, by almost all of the newly formed governments of East Central Europe points to the significance of gender and reproduction in the postsocialist transformations. The fourteen studies in this volume result from a comparative, collaborative research project on the complex relationship between ideas and practices of gender, and political economic change. The book presents detailed evidence about women's and men's new circumstances in eight of the former communist countries, exploring the intersection of politics and the life cycle, the differential effects of economic restructuring, and women's public and political participation. Individual contributions on the former German Democratic Republic, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria provide rich empirical data and interpretive insights on postsocialist transformation analyzed from a gendered perspective. Drawing on multiple methods and disciplines, these original papers advance scholarship in several fields, including anthropology, sociology, women's studies, law, comparative political science, and regional studies. The analyses make clear that practices of gender, and ideas about the differences between men and women, have been crucial in shaping the broad social changes that have followed the collapse of communism. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Eleonora Zieliãska, Eva Maleck-Lewy, Myra Marx Ferree, Sharon Wolchik, Irene Dölling, Daphne Hahn, Sylka Scholz, Mira Marody, Anna Giza-Poleszczuk, Katalin Kovács, Mónika Váradi, Julia Szalai, Adriana Baban, MaÏgorzata Fuszara, Laura Grunberg, Zorica Mrseviâ, Krassimira Daskalova, Joanna Goven, and Jasmina Lukiâ.
Reproducing Racism: How Everyday Choices Lock In White Advantage
by Daria RoithmayrArgues that racial inequality reproduces itself automatically over time because early unfair advantage for whites has paved the way for continuing advantageThis book is designed to change the way we think about racial inequality. Long after the passage of civil rights laws, blacks and Latinos possess barely a nickel of wealth for every dollar that whites have. Why have we made so little progress?Legal scholar Daria Roithmayr provocatively argues that racial inequality lives on because white advantage functions as a powerful self-reinforcing monopoly, reproducing itself automatically from generation to generation even in the absence of intentional discrimination. Drawing on work in antitrust law and a range of other disciplines, Roithmayr brilliantly compares the dynamics of white advantage to the unfair tactics of giants like AT&T and Microsoft.With penetrating insight, Roithmayr locates the engine of white monopoly in positive feedback loops that connect the dramatic disparity of Jim Crow to modern racial gaps in jobs, housing and education. Wealthy white neighborhoods fund public schools that then turn out wealthy white neighbors. Whites with lucrative jobs informally refer their friends, who refer their friends, and so on. Roithmayr concludes that racial inequality might now be locked in place, unless policymakers immediately take drastic steps to dismantle this oppressive system.
Reproducing the British Caribbean
by Juanita De BarrosThis innovative book traces the history of ideas and policymaking concerning population growth and infant and maternal welfare in Caribbean colonies wrestling with the aftermath of slavery. Focusing on Jamaica, Guyana, and Barbados from the nineteenth century through the 1930s, when violent labor protests swept the region, Juanita De Barros takes a comparative approach in analyzing the struggles among former slaves and masters attempting to determine the course of their societies after emancipation. Invested in the success of the "great experiment" of slave emancipation, colonial officials developed new social welfare and health policies. Concerns about the health and size of ex-slave populations were expressed throughout the colonial world during this period. In the Caribbean, an emergent black middle class, rapidly increasing immigration, and new attitudes toward medicine and society were crucial factors. While hemispheric and diasporic trends influenced the new policies, De Barros shows that local physicians, philanthropists, midwives, and the impoverished mothers who were the targets of this official concern helped shape and implement efforts to ensure the health and reproduction of Caribbean populations in the decades before independence.
Reproducing the French Race: Immigration, Intimacy, and Embodiment in the Early Twentieth Century
by Elisa CamiscioliIn Reproducing the French Race, Elisa Camiscioli argues that immigration was a defining feature of early-twentieth-century France, and she examines the political, cultural, and social issues implicated in public debates about immigration and national identity at the time. Camiscioli demonstrates that mass immigration provided politicians, jurists, industrialists, racial theorists, feminists, and others with ample opportunity to explore questions of French racial belonging, France's relationship to the colonial empire and the rest of Europe, and the connections between race and national anxieties regarding depopulation and degeneration. She also shows that discussions of the nation and its citizenry consistently returned to the body: its color and gender, its expenditure of labor power, its reproductive capacity, and its experience of desire. Of paramount importance was the question of which kinds of bodies could assimilate into the "French race. " By focusing on telling aspects of the immigration debate, Camiscioli reveals how racial hierarchies were constructed, how gender figured in their creation, and how only white Europeans were cast as assimilable. Delving into pronatalist politics, she describes how potential immigrants were ranked according to their imagined capacity to adapt to the workplace and family life in France. She traces the links between racialized categories and concerns about industrial skills and output, and she examines medico-hygienic texts on interracial sex, connecting those to the crusade against prostitution and the related campaign to abolish "white slavery," the alleged entrapment of (white) women for sale into prostitution abroad. Camiscioli also explores the debate surrounding the 1927 law that first made it possible for French women who married foreigners to keep their French nationality. She concludes by linking the Third Republic's impulse to create racial hierarchies to the emergence of the Vichy regime.
Reproducing The World: Essays In Feminist Theory
by Mary O'BrienThis book offers a small contribution to ongoing feminist struggles to advance and support the reproduction and transformation of collective being-in-the-world. It explores ethnocentrism, preoccupation with theoretical issues, and a celibate indifference to (or repression of) sexual issues.
Reproduction and Social Organization in Sub-Saharan Africa (Studies in Demography #4)
by Ron J. LesthaegheUnlike most Asian and Latin American countries, sub-Saharan Africa has seen both an increase in population growth rates and a weakening of traditional patterns of child-spacing since the 1960s. It is tempting to conclude that sub-Saharan countries have simply not reached adequate levels of income, education, and urbanization for a fertility decline to occur. This book argues, however, that such a socioeconomic threshold hypothesis will not provide an adequate basis for comparison. These authors take the view that any reproductive regime is also anchored to a broader pattern of social organization, including the prevailing modes of production, rules of exchange, patterns of religious systems, kinship structure, division of labor, and gender roles. They link the characteristic features of the African reproductive regime with regard to nuptiality, polygyny, breastfeeding, postpartum abstinence, sterility, and child-fostering to other specifically African characteristics of social organization and culture. Substantial attention is paid to the heterogeneity that prevails among sub-Saharan societies and considerable use is made, therefore, of interethnic comparisons. As a result the book goes considerably beyond mere demographic description and builds bridges between demography and anthropology or sociology. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1989.
The Reproduction of Inequality: How Class Shapes the Pregnant Body and Infant Health (Health, Society, and Inequality)
by Katherine MasonAn important analysis of the difference class makes in reproductive health choicesCan you run a marathon, drink coffee, eat fish, or fly on a plane while pregnant? Such questions are just the tip of the iceberg for how most pregnant women’s bodies are managed, surveilled, and scrutinized during pregnancy. The Reproduction of Inequality examines the intense social pressure that expectant and new mothers face when it comes to their health and body-care choices.Drawing on interviews with dozens of pregnant women and new mothers from poor, middle-class, and mixed-class backgrounds, Katherine Mason paints a vivid picture of the immense weight of expectation that comes with the early stages of motherhood. The women in Mason’s study universally sought to give their children a healthy start in life; however, their chosen approaches varied based on their socio-economic class. Whereas middle-class mothers attempted a complete lifestyle change and absolute devotion to the achievement and maintenance of “the healthy pregnant body,” poorer women made strategic choices about which health goals to prioritize on a limited budget, lacking the economic and cultural capital required to speak and perfectly adhere to the language of “good health.” The unfortunate result is that middle-class mothers are more likely to be seen by others and by themselves as “good” parents, whereas the efforts of working-class mothers are often misread as displaying inadequate concern about their health and that of their child. This in turn contributes to longstanding stereotypes about poor families and communities, and limits their children's chances for upward mobility. The Reproduction of Inequality is a compelling analysis of the impact of class on new mothers’ approaches to health and wellness, and a sobering examination of how inequality shapes mothers’ efforts to maximize their own health and that of their children.
Reproduction on the Reservation: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Colonialism in the Long Twentieth Century (Critical Indigeneities Ser.)
by Brianna TheobaldThis book documents the transformation of reproductive practices and politics on Indian reservations from the late nineteenth century to the present, integrating a localized history of childbearing, motherhood, and activism on the Crow Reservation in Montana with an analysis of trends affecting Indigenous women more broadly. As the author illustrates, the federal government and local authorities have long sought to control Indigenous families and women's reproduction, using tactics such as coercive sterilization and removal of Indigenous children into the white foster care system. But she examines women's resistance, showing how they have worked within families, tribal networks, and activist groups to confront these issues. Blending local and intimate family histories with the histories of national movements such as WARN (Women of All Red Nations), the author links the federal government's intrusion into Indigenous women's reproductive and familial decisions to the wider history of eugenics and the reproductive rights movement. She argues convincingly that colonial politics have always been--and remain--reproductive politics. By looking deeply at one tribal nation over more than a century, the author offers an especially rich analysis of how Indigenous women experienced pregnancy and motherhood under evolving federal Indian policy. At the heart of this history are the Crow women who displayed creativity and fortitude in struggling for reproductive self-determination.
Reproduction Reconceived: Family Making and the Limits of Choice after Roe v. Wade (Reproductive Justice: A New Vision for the 21st Century #5)
by Sara MatthiesenThe landmark case Roe v. Wade redefined family: it is now commonplace for Americans to treat having children as a choice. But the historic decision also coincided with widening inequality, an ongoing trend that continues to make choice more myth than reality. In this new and timely history, Matthiesen shows how the effects of incarceration, for-profit healthcare, disease, and poverty have been worsened by state neglect, forcing most to work harder to maintain a family.
Reproductive Acts
by Heather LatimerForty years after Roe v. Wade, it is evident that the ideologies of "choices" and "rights," which have publicly framed reproductive politics in North America since the landmark legal decision, have been inadequate in making sense of the topic's complexities. In Reproductive Acts, Heather Latimer investigates what contemporary fiction and film can tell us about the divisive nature of these politics, and demonstrates how fictional representations of reproduction allow for readings of reproductive politics that are critical of the terms of the debate itself. In an innovative argument about the power of fiction to engage and shape politics, Latimer analyzes works by authors such as Margaret Atwood, Kathy Acker, Toni Morrison, Larissa Lai, and director Alfonso Cuarón, among others, to claim that the unease surrounding reproduction, particularly the abortion debate, has increased both inside and outside the US over the last forty years. Fictional representation, Latimer argues, reveals reproductive politics to be deeply connected to cultural anxieties about gender, race, citizenship, and sexuality - anxieties that cannot be contained under the rules of individual rights or choices. Striking a balance between fictional, historical, and political analysis, Reproductive Acts makes a compelling argument for the vital role narrative plays in how we make sense of North American reproductive politics.
Reproductive Acts: Sexual Politics in North American Fiction and Film
by Heather LatimerForty years after Roe v. Wade, it is evident that the ideologies of "choices" and "rights," which have publicly framed reproductive politics in North America since the landmark legal decision, have been inadequate in making sense of the topic's complexities. In Reproductive Acts, Heather Latimer investigates what contemporary fiction and film can tell us about the divisive nature of these politics, and demonstrates how fictional representations of reproduction allow for readings of reproductive politics that are critical of the terms of the debate itself. In an innovative argument about the power of fiction to engage and shape politics, Latimer analyzes works by authors such as Margaret Atwood, Kathy Acker, Toni Morrison, Larissa Lai, and director Alfonso Cuarón, among others, to claim that the unease surrounding reproduction, particularly the abortion debate, has increased both inside and outside the US over the last forty years. Fictional representation, Latimer argues, reveals reproductive politics to be deeply connected to cultural anxieties about gender, race, citizenship, and sexuality - anxieties that cannot be contained under the rules of individual rights or choices. Striking a balance between fictional, historical, and political analysis, Reproductive Acts makes a compelling argument for the vital role narrative plays in how we make sense of North American reproductive politics.
The Reproductive Body at Work: The South African Bioeconomy of Egg Donation (Routledge Advances in Feminist Studies and Intersectionality)
by Verena NambergerThe transnational industry surrounding assisted reproductive technology and regenerative medicine is based on the unacknowledged labour of gamete providers, surrogates and research subjects, and benefits from low labour costs in ‘enabling’ sectors such as logistics and transport. This finding calls for a comprehensive analysis of how the contemporary intersection of neoliberal capitalism and the life sciences - in short, the bioeconomy - capitalises on the body and its (re)productive capacities. The Reproductive Body at Work uptakes this challenge as it explores the relations between value production, labour and the body in one particular realm of the global bioeconomy: the South African bioeconomy of ‘egg donation’. It highlights different forms and dimensions of unacknowledged or precarious human labour that are constitutive for the procurement, brokering and circulation of oocytes as valuable resources. The analysis illustrates that the respective organisation of value and labour renegotiate what ‘the’ (re)productive body can do, which status and roles it is ascribed, which cultural and economic values it signifies and how it is experienced and enacted within a matrix of intersectional power relations. A theoretically profound contribution to the interdisciplinary debate on ‘New materialism’, The Reproductive Body at Work will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as gender studies, medical anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, political economy and science and technology studies.
Reproductive Citizens: Gender, Immigration, and the State in Modern France, 1880–1945
by Nimisha BartonIn the familiar tale of mass migration to France from 1880 onward, we know very little about the hundreds of thousands of women who formed a critical part of those migration waves. In Reproductive Citizens, Nimisha Barton argues that their relative absence in the historical record hints at a larger and more problematic oversight—the role of sex and gender in shaping the experiences of migrants to France before the Second World War. Barton's compelling history of social citizenship demonstrates how, through the routine application of social policies, state and social actors worked separately toward a shared goal: repopulating France with immigrant families. Filled with voices gleaned from census reports, municipal statistics, naturalization dossiers, court cases, police files, and social worker registers, Reproductive Citizens shows how France welcomed foreign-born men and women—mobilizing naturalization, family law, social policy, and welfare assistance to ensure they would procreate, bearing French-assimilated children. Immigrants often embraced these policies because they, too, stood to gain from pensions, family allowances, unemployment benefits, and French nationality. By striking this bargain, they were also guaranteed safety and stability on a tumultuous continent.Barton concludes that, in return for generous social provisions and refuge in dark times, immigrants joined the French nation through marriage and reproduction, breadwinning and child-rearing—in short, through families and family-making—which made them more French than even formal citizenship status could.